


Double-edged Sword

by valderys



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Pre-Canon, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-01
Updated: 2010-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-11 09:34:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valderys/pseuds/valderys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a Seer is a burden, but Merlin finds he has a unique opportunity when he meets Taliesin, Chief of Bards. Taliesin is a powerful Seer in his own right, and may have the answers that Merlin seeks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Double-edged Sword

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Greens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greens/gifts).



> I wrote this to explore a piece of Merlin legend that the show hasn't exploited - namely that Merlin is so very powerful because he, or his memory, at least, is progressing backwards :)

Merlin doesn't remember when it starts. He is young, though, very young. A tiny child. His mother, Hunith, thinks he is telling funny stories, babbling as babies do. She's proud of him, he's bright for his age, and he talks earlier than any other baby in the village.

Merlin thinks they're stories too. They happen to be stories that unfold in his mind's eye, pictures really, and so he talks about them, describes them, in so far as he has the words. They seem so fantastical, glimpses of another world, somewhere that has waving banners, charging horses, and a golden head wearing a crown.

But sometimes the stories are of more mundane things, Edward Cropper's fields black with mould, the stream overflowing into the water meadow, children screaming with laughter as they skate on the pond, cheeks and hands rosy with the cold.

They're just stories, but luckily it's Merlin himself who begins to realise when they start coming true. The pictures in his head are so much more accurate than the tales he spins, that it's easy for him to see when something recreates it, not just closely, but perfectly. Merlin remembers the first time it happened, he must have been three or four, but it's burned onto his memory. When Old Man Simmons is chasing Merlin's friend Will in the woods and the tree comes down on him. It's not as though Merlin is there, but it feels like he is, he might as well have been, and when they bring Old Man Simmons back, on a rail, groaning fit to wake the dead, Merlin stands in the doorway, holding onto his Mother's skirts and he knows. He's seen it before, the procession, the white faces, the anxious worry. He wonders whether he should tell people that Old Man Simmons will be all right. He turns to start telling his mother, but then he gets another vision, even stronger, of her holding his shoulders and telling him he has to keep the magic secret.

He shuts up after that, becomes almost mute. The fear in her eyes has a powerful effect on him when he's three or four. The fact that he remembers her grasping his shoulders - and yet he can tell he's taller than she is now - that has even more.

Of course, he can't keep the knowledge from her forever, even if he wants to, his visions are too accurate for that. She laughs to begin with, but later, after too many things come true, then Hunith begins to look scared. Never of him, for which he is eternally grateful, but the world has suddenly become a much more dangerous place for them, and Merlin's visions seem to get correspondingly darker. Now there are glimpses of terrible beasts, a man being beheaded in a stone courtyard, battlefields strewn with bodies. Merlin doesn't sleep well. He doesn't know what to do.

Because he can't change anything. Merlin knows, he's tried. Oh, small things to begin with. The blackberrying picnic he sees by the Old Stump, he tries to lead the group away somewhere else. That works, but then Merlin gets them all lost, and just when everyone's sense of humour is about to fail, they find their way again. Using the Old Stump as a landmark, naturally. The picnic's rather fun, and Merlin's forgiven, but he eats his share in deepest gloom. His mouth and fingers are purple with sweet fruit and yet he cannot be happy. What good are these visions, if he can't do anything about them?

He tries not to go completely crazy when it's something that matters, something that's important. And so he grows.

When Merlin is thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, he begins to dream about a boy. The visions leave him wrung out, he wakes with tears on his pillow, the straw he lies on widely disarranged. The boy is wheaten-haired and slim, and as Merlin dreams, he sees the boy slowly toughening up, putting on muscle and sinew, as he trains and trains, and tries to be the son his father wants him to be. The boy is arrogant and compassionate in equal measure, and although he's got his pride, he will make the greatest, the most wise and generous King the world has ever known. It strips Merlin's heart in two.

For he is there, sometimes. Many visions are from his own point of view. Sometimes dream-Merlin will put out a hand and grasp the boy's shoulder, and his hand is older, with brown spots of age, or slim and young, roughened from work. Merlin doesn't recognise either hand. He always recognises the boy though, even in the silvered, weathered features of the man he becomes. `Arthur', people call him at times, and `your majesty', sometimes `your highness' if he is very young, and Merlin's own voice is among them. Roughened by time, by sorrow, but always there by his side.

When Merlin is sixteen, seventeen, eighteen his dreams turn, they take on a more intimate tone. Merlin tries to tell himself that it's just his age, the fevered blood of youth, but never yet have the visions been ever less than accurate. Merlin burns now, every night. He wakes to sticky blankets, and memories of smooth strong limbs, criss-crossed with scars. A long throat, thrown back in ecstasy. Endearments murmured in passion, insults shouted in good humour, and always, always, Arthur, at the heart of it, the sun around which Merlin's life revolves.

Merlin tries to distract himself, he kisses Will, long hot kisses in the woods, in the old secret campsite they made together, and it's sweet and meaningful, and Merlin loves it, loves Will... But it's not the same. Because he truly loves Arthur, Merlin realises, he loves a boy he has yet to even set eyes on.

Merlin tries to live his life, to forget about all that is to come, he tries not to look forward to it so much, to always be so strange to others. He knows people in the village have noticed it, and there is some muttering. He knows because he's seen them whispering to themselves, by the well, in the bake-house. So he tries instead to dwell in the past, to remember the good times, the love of his mother, the carefree existence of a child. Except - there are holes, there are gaps, his memory is like a moth-eaten blanket discovered in a long-abandoned chest - carefully preserved but still in tatters, the pattern only just discernable.

And that frightens Merlin more than anything. Because what is a man, but the sum of his memories, and if he cannot even retain the simple things, what will happen to him at the last? As if in response, he finds his dreams become darker yet; a dark-skinned woman with tears in her eyes, running away with a beautiful knight, and Arthur's poorly hidden sense of betrayal. Heads on pikes, decorating the castle walls. The final battle, Arthur dying in another's arms...

Merlin wakes with a shout, his head pounding, his heart beating like a drum in his chest. His mother runs a soothing hand over his brow and hands him willowbark tea, she's used to this, Merlin is ashamed that she's had to become used to this. He gets damp-eyed, and sniffs into his tea because his friend, his beloved Arthur, is dead, before they have even met. The irony of this does not escape him.

He goes wandering now, does Merlin, the fields and woods look the same in any time, he's free there, he can ignore his... destiny. He doesn't have to hear the continuing mutters, or the silences, there's enough of both in his visions. Instead, he wanders further and further each day, trying to tire himself so much that his dreams will not wake him. He is not entirely successful.

One day, he comes across a cave, and sat in the cave-mouth, there is a man. He's dressed in rags and tatters, but he seems to be no ordinary beggar. He has a kingly air, and he wears the remnants of clothing that was rich, once upon a time. He also has sharp eyes like a sparrow and a long grey beard. There is a lap-harp slung across his back.

"Good morning," says the man, "My name is Taliesin, Chief of Bards. You must be Merlin, I think."

Merlin is skulking. He is good at it, because meetings with strangers, in his experience, rarely go well. He's prepared to run away - he's very good at running too - but there's something about Taliesin. And bards are less dangerous than most travellers, he knows, because they sing songs about love, and being dragged into bogs by piskies, and they can drink a tavern dry, but none of those things hold any fears for Merlin out here in the mountains, between the earth and the sky.

He wonders how Taliesin knows his name.

"Yes, I'm Merlin," he agrees, at last, because curiosity has been known to kill other things than cats. Merlin's suspicious, but if there's nothing else that his visions have taught him, he knows there's more wonder and evil out in the world than can be imagined by anyone, including himself.

"I dreamed I would meet you here," says Taliesin, "And so here I am. Because I am a Seer, and I know that these things are not to be fought, or changed, or avoided. As you do, I believe."

And Merlin's heart cries out to hear that he is not alone, that there is another fated to know the fortunes of man, that he can share the burden, and comes to sit at Taliesin's feet. He wants to learn. He wants to find out if he can get rid of this, this gift, that is more like a curse. He wants to know if he can be _free_.

And Taliesin seems to know everything, he answers all of Merlin's questions. Taliesin tells him that he is a creature born of the Old Religion, that he is fated to bring magic back to the Kingdom. That it is his destiny, that he shares it with Arthur, and that it cannot be avoided. That he is the strongest Seer of all, much greater than Taliesin himself, or even the great enchantress, Ceridwen, of song and story. That the reason why his power is so great is because he lives his life, in essence, backwards. That the older he grows the more the past will escape him, and the more the future will exert its hold on his mind's eye. Until, by the end of his life, Taliesin explains, all Merlin will be able to see, will be the future. He will remember nothing of his past at all, from one moment to the next.

Merlin does not think he imagines the pity he sees in Taliesin's eyes.

Merlin wants to weep again. And it's funny, because it's not as though his life is going to be a bed of roses, or that he wants this in any way. But the saddest thing, he finds, the stupidest, most idiotic thing of all is... He will forget Arthur. He will forget their first meeting, and all the others in between. He will forget the way the morning light through the castle's windows shines on his hair, he'll forget all their arguments, and the taste of his mouth warm with wine. He'll forget even love, in the end. And that seems the harshest sacrifice of all.

"No," says Merlin, at last, as he sits at Taliesin's feet. "No," says Merlin, as he rises up to his full height, and clenches his fists. "_No_," says Merlin, finally, and looks expectantly at Taliesin, his face screwed into a scowl.

"If I am so bloody powerful," says Merlin, "Then there must be something that I can do."

And Taliesin sighs, as though he expected this, and he shifts slightly on his rock before the cave. Merlin flinches, but Taliesin only unslings his harp from his back, and sets to tuning the strings.

"What is it?" asks Merlin, afraid now, somehow, for all his frustration and anger. Taliesin is so quiet, after all his talk, after all his explanations, and patient answers.

"I know what you want," he says, "And it will have so many repercussions. So much pain and sorrow. I wish you wouldn't ask me."

"I don't have to," says Merlin, belligerantly, and then drops his gaze in the face of those sparrow's eyes, so beady, and so knowing. "If you see everything, why don't you just tell me what I need to know."

"Because it doesn't work that way. Because you have to ask. We all have free will, Merlin, even Seers like you and I. That's the way it works." And Taliesin's smile is sad.

So Merlin takes a deep breath, and he hold his head up, and he asks. "How can I stop being a Seer?"

Taliesin fingers the strings on his harp, and says, "I can play for you and the power will be changed, but it won't be gone. You know that, don't you?"

Merlin nods, impatiently. "Get on with it. Please," he adds belatedly, because if a powerful Seer and apparent Sorceror is going to do you a magical favour, it probably pays to be polite.

Taliesin looks at him, and then he looks at the green trees around them, and the birds on their branches. "The world will be changed if I do this, Merlin. You won't be able to help Arthur in the same way, for a start. Do you really want me to do this?"

Merlin thinks about it, because that seems only fair, thinks of all the memories he has of Arthur throughout their life together, all that's still to come. And then he imagines their first meeting, with Merlin greeting Arthur like a long lost friend, and then weeping for losing him, all at the same time, and he winces. Arthur won't understand. Arthur won't understand, that as soon as Merlin meets him, he'll be starting to forget him. And who'd be the prat then?

"Please," Merlin says again, "Please take this stupid gift and... Well, you know what I mean."

There's a ghost of a smile on Taliesin's face, and his white teeth shine out startlingly from his beard. "For the third, and last time, Merlin Emrys, I ask you, because I must. I tell you that the Balance will not be upset. If you give up this power, another will be found to take your place. You will not know who, or when, but someone else will suffer under the burden you give up - and it will not be a happy choice. There is always a Price."

Merlin stares, because it seems to him that Taliesin has become taller, or larger, or something. It seems like his voice is deeper, and that it echoes around the cave they sit in. Merlin swallows his suddenly dry throat and nods, firmly. He won't change his mind. He holds onto the memory of Arthur dying in another's arms, dying at all, in fact, and knows he doesn't want this to be all he thinks of, for the whole of their lives. All this knowledge haunting everything that they do. Perhaps it is selfish of him, in fact, it's almost certainly selfish of him, but he wants this. More than anything.

"Take it," says Merlin, and his voice is strong, with no more trembling, and no more doubt. "Take it from me."

And Taliesin bows in acquiescence. He sets the harp properly upon his lap, and he begins to play. It's a beautiful melody, thinks Merlin, and Taliesin is marvellously skilled, but then he soon forgets both tune and player, and falls away into another life. He'll run home to Hunith before long, and tell her he can't remember his dreams any more, not any of them. He'll tell her things will be different now. It's possible that she may weep a little from happiness - before the first household object begins to levitate anyway. And then Merlin will be full of consternation, but his sunny nature won't be unduly bothered for long. Unfortunately, the villagers will still mutter by the well, although the tenor of their gossip will have changed.

It's a different world, and yet it is still the same.

Later on, Merlin will be sent from his village by his mother, because it isn't safe for him at home. He will trudge the long weary miles to Camelot, and there he will meet a young Prince, in the castle, in the marketplace, and he'll call him a prat. But he'll save his life despite this, and Merlin will still be made Arthur's servant, much to his own disgruntlement.

All these things will happen, because that is how they happen. But this time Merlin will save Arthur with his magic instead, his strange, slightly unpredictable magic. And he won't remember doing so. He'll only know that Arthur and he are two sides of the same coin. He'll only know that he loves him.

Luckily, he won't remember why.


End file.
